Hi Grant

Thanks for taking the time to respond. Rather than looking for a specific solution, I guess what I really need is advice on how to handle this type of scenario - ie a fixed table with transient data. I agree, a proper analysis of the problem requires more than a simple description.

I think contention is almost certainly the cause, and I suspect it involves the indexing - given the short duration of records, possibly fragmentation. I have been doing a lot of reading over the last 24 hours and I am beginning to think that it is related to the auto updating of statistics, set to true on that database. The fact that I was unable to replicate the error during yesterday's testing but able to cause it on Friday suggests something has changed. The most significant thing I can currently think of is the weekly database maintenance, rebuilding the indexes being a part of that.

I had originally done it this way because it was simpler to provide editable data to a form using a table. But given the problem I am having, I suspect that I might have to change this technique or alternatively change the management of the table. So I'm hoping that someone with experience with similar data will have some advice, or some one with a better technical understanding of SQL than me (not at all hard) will similarly be able to advise.

Cheers

Rowan